ANF to Nurses: Get Some Sleep

Running on only a few hours of sleep? Just pump the coffee, right?

Wrong, according to the American Nurses Foundation, which is raising the alarm about shift work disorders and the profound ways they can affect nurses and patient care.

"There's increasing research on it, and the nursing angle is so important," says Kate Judge, executive director of the American Nurses Foundation. "Sleep is like water and food, absolutely essential, but it's the thing that we kind of compromise first."

"The issue of whether nurses are healthy or not is a really key issue for the nation. One in 100 people in the U.S. are nurses, so if nurses aren't healthy that's a national issue for the country," Judge tells HealthLeaders Media.